Yeah, I made a few attempts to align the regional boundaries, and I centered it more visually at first. But then some of the corners didn't line up with the arm gaps the same way they did in screenshots of the in-game codex map. Some of that might also be due to scaling the whole overlay too, but it's hard to tell.

The good news is that now that I've created the "path" in Photoshop, I can scale and move it around as needed before re-rasterizing.

I didn't see if the journals will record region names as people travel. I hope it does, so that EDSM can build up some region data.

Yeah, I made a few attempts to align the regional boundaries, and I centered it more visually at first. But then some of the corners didn't line up with the arm gaps the same way they did in screenshots of the in-game codex map. Some of that might also be due to scaling the whole overlay too, but it's hard to tell.

The good news is that now that I've created the "path" in Photoshop, I can scale and move it around as needed before re-rasterizing.

I didn't see if the journals will record region names as people travel. I hope it does, so that EDSM can build up some region data.

It does, but not very usefully. At least in my journal files from the beta, the region name is only emitted when you create a Codex entry by scanning a new type of object. So EDSM could harvest region names from the journals, but each player could only contribute one system per type of object (104 in total, I think?). We might need something similar to the current triangulation interface, allowing players to manually tag systems with the region they are in. Of course, once we have good boundaries, EDSM can do that automatically from the coordinates. Then perhaps it could do something similar to how it puts systems needing more trilateral distances on the front page -- proactively ask commanders to check stars calculated to be close to a region border to verify which region they are in.

I've tweaked the positioning of the region boundaries and labels, but I know it's still not quite right. I'll have to make more adjustments later when we can start getting some positioning info in-game on where the region corners are.

I'm still tweaking the region boundaries on the interactive map, but it's already a lot better. I've been flying out to some of the boundary intersections, where 3 regions come together, and it's helping to line things up.

Also, I started to get curious about the exploration data rates before and after 3.3. The server downtime on Tuesday is quite apparent in the data, and the weekend had a huge amount of activity:

Complete side note, do you have an image of the galaxy regions overlay? I have been trying to track one down without much luck.

Just the overlay itself? I had to make mine in a high resolution for the map. I stuffed a copy of it here (currently about 2 MB, PNG with transparent background). That URL will get updated with whatever the current copy is, as I make changes.

Thanks for the numbers! To be honest, I expected a larger spike on the number of systems, but it's still pretty good. Of course, the update is most popular with new explorers, who are the least likely to upload to EDSM. As for the bodies and stars, that's a direct consequence of the FSS. A very nice unintended benefit for community exploration
Would you mind running the same queries monthly? Should be interesting to see the results.

Just the overlay itself? I had to make mine in a high resolution for the map. I stuffed a copy of it here (currently about 2 MB, PNG with transparent background). That URL will get updated with whatever the current copy is, as I make changes.

Sweet, thanks! Didn't expect to see historical data, but it's very good for context. It's curious that the highest levels of explorer activity, in numbers of systems visited, was around The Return (2.4), and Beyond Chapter One (3.0). The current spike is more of a return to regular levels after a lengthy decrease (little wonder, as few wanted to explore when the new mechanics were coming), even if we assume that 50,000 systems will be visited each day. I have to admit, this worries me a bit. But after all, it's the EDSM data only - seems to correlate nicely with overall Steam stats though.

Oh, and just to be certain: I assume the "systems" means new systems logged, not systems visited, right?

Yep that's right, it's new ones logged. Although an unfortunate side effect I discovered is that EDSM alters the system's date when a second visitor corroborates the coordinates. So it's the date of submission if only one commander has visited, or the date of the second commander's visit if it has had 2 or more visitors.